:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I’ve heard that fresh cucumbers from the garden are excellent. I wouldn’t really know. All of the cucumber plants from our gardens over the years withered before the cucumbers grew larger than a clementine.

We tried to water and fertilize them. We gave them nice hills. We provided a trellis for them to climb. After three years of trying, nothing.

The first year or two, I can look back at specific things we did wrong. However, during the third year I’d like to think that a heat wave at a critical point in the growing season knocked out our young cucumber plants.

We drove out to our community garden plot to water them, but it seemed that we could never give them enough water. They just turned yellow and wasted away.

It’s frustrating when you realize how little you really can control in life. If I ever lose my temper, it’s usually linked to plumbing or car repair. I usually can’t find what I need, the part I need to remove won’t budge, or things just won’t piece together like they should.

Sometimes people frustrate us when they don’t pick up on how we feel or they flat out ignore what we’ve asked them to do. From a colleague who fails to follow up on an important project to a child who has to be told “no” for the thousandth time, we have daily reminders of how little control we have over our lives.

Unhealthy anger springs up in my life when I try to control the wrong things or when I expect that anything I try to do should be easy. I demand a right to something that I have no business expecting.

There’s no reason why I should expect to have my way all of the time. Who can? Control is given to us in small doses. Faith comes into the picture as a seeming consolation prize.

We can plan. We can act responsibly. Nevertheless, we can’t plan for everything. Life has a way of slipping through our grasp. Problems sneak up and then pounce on us.

In the book of Job, God replies to Job with one of the most dramatic dressing downs anyone has ever received. At one point, God mentioned that only he can tame the Leviathan—a sea monster of some sort that lurks in the story eerily undefined.

Whatever a Leviathan was, God pulled on ocean imagery because the Jews were not known as sailors. They were terrified of the ocean. Maybe 400 years of slavery in Egypt robbed them of a taste for the salty ocean breeze.

When Jews thought of the most out of control place, it was the ocean. In many respects, it still is. And yet, God declared his dominion over the worst thing in an ocean.

Sometimes God will declare “peace be still” in the chaos of our lives and other times we may end up shipwrecked but still alive. Either way, God passes through the uncertainties of life with us.

It’s pretty startling to think that God sends his Spirit to dwell in our lives and then walks through the uncertainties of life with us. Even as we struggle with doubt, fear, uncertainty, frustration, and anger, he is present with us, waiting for us to rely on him.

Much like the disciples who called out in fear during the storm while Jesus slept, panic and anger usually feel a lot more productive than bringing our cares to God. And yet, he’s with us in order to make that possible.

The crazy part about following Jesus is that having less control can actually bring us more peace—that is, so long as we’ve entrusted control in the right place.

The Greenhouse

What do you want to control most in life?

As you pray today, ask God to show you the right way to let go of control in that area.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

I once heard that a Christian group had organized an “advance” for a weekend—which was their version of a retreat that would supposedly help attendees take strides forward in victory. I think that the intention of this group was certainly well-meaning. However, I wonder if this use of words hints at what we really associate with a spiritual “retreat.”

We think something like this: You only retreat if you’re losing.

For starters, most of us hate losing. In addition, we’re promised victory and success as followers of Jesus who rose from the dead and conquered sin. The victors do not retreat.

You don’t need to read a lot of history to know that even victorious armies needed to rest battle-weary troops. Even if victory is guaranteed, our day to day lives will take a toll on us. We may even suffer setbacks.

We don’t need retreats because some of us are particularly weak or inadequate. We need retreats because that is the only way anyone can win. Sometimes we literally need to step back and let God recharge us.

One practice I’ve been testing out during Lent is waking up earlier and then taking a break in the middle of my day—a mini-retreat. Since I’m self-employed, I’m often tempted to work for most of my day without even taking a meaningful lunch break, leaving myself burned out by the evening.

This small retreat has helped me rethink my day, establish a better pace, and wind myself down a bit more by the time dinner comes.

The big challenge for me is the thought of taking an actual long-term retreat for a weekend or, gasp, longer. I have this illusion that I’ll only advance if I keep pushing forward, if I keep working, if I keep the same spiritual routines, and if I maintain some measure of control over my life.

One of the more difficult passages in the Bible, for me at least, is the one about the Holy Spirit praying for me. I find it hard to wrap my mind around God’s Spirit making requests to God the Father on my behalf. It’s like God knows we can’t do it all on our own, and he’s already helping us before we ask.

Perhaps believing this will help us take more retreats—trusting that God is in the daily struggle of life with us. He’s here to support us when we can’t go on.

He knows we need to take breaks and that we need to fall back and retreat. He knows that a retreat from life can lead to an advance in him. He’s already advancing in our lives, praying on our behalf. All we need to do is join him.

The Greenhouse

Can you build a mini-retreat into your day? Do you have some time set aside already as a lunch break or other break? Ask God to show you how he can use that time to help you recharge.

Take some time to meditate on what it means for the Holy Spirit to pray for you. Are you willing to accept the Spirit’s prayers for your today?

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

There are few things more intimidating than introducing a guest post by Lisa Delay. She’s got serious chops in theology, spirituality, technology, design, and humor—especially in the subset of Ligers. Perhaps I need only say that anyone who doesn’t enjoy Lisa is probably the kind of person who steals ice cream from children or eats all of the steak in the house. In light of that, I’m delighted to have Lisa’s guest post today.

As a seminary student a couple of years ago, I would often hear the comment, “Do you want to be a pastor of a church?” Some were intrigued as they asked me, and others were sort of surprised or even dismayed. I might say something like, “Oh gosh, no!” Then some would let out a little sigh of relief, and others would just freeze in a perplexed stare.

I never went to seminary to end up leading a church.

I went to learn and grow, and to help educate my writing to produce the same in others with the help of the Almighty, that is. The call to study at such a place seemed undeniable, but certainly out of place by typical determinations. Could this really be beneficial when it appeared to be only a difficult, time-consuming, costly, and career-limiting stint of higher education?

My denomination’s doors for women as pastors are shut and locked from the inside. Why not just get an MBA in 1/3 the time and get five times the return for my financial investment? Right? Duh.

It’s important in the course of this story to share that I don’t take the word “call” lightly. It hardly ever applies to me, save two other times. I just don’t use that language, and I tend to be suspicious when people over-utilize that word.

No, for me a “call” is like this deep conviction planted in my heart (think Dallas Willard. The heart = one’s control center/will). This conviction then progresses through prayer, study, introspection, and wise counsel. I sense that if I don’t move in a certain direction I’ll be standing against something much bigger than me, and blocking it somehow to my own detriment.

It could be that God knew that ministry in the local church setting was a human-sized dream and not a God-sized one for me. It turns out we are now perfectly poised for women of God to influence the world with God’s love in ways we couldn’t have even dreamed up even a decade ago.

Connection to others through the internet breaks all the gender-centric barriers Christians and culture have propagated for thousands of years. These barriers have often cut women off from being the teachers, apostles, prophets, and whatever else God has gifted them to be.

This transformation of gender roles came into laser focus for me when I viewed Johanna Blakley in her TED talk entitled “Social Media and the End of Gender”. Blakley explains how women primarily drive and dominant social media in every category, worldwide. Yet, instead of a feminization of the internet landscape, people aggregate in “Taste Communities.” Gender stereotypes are now trumped by more accurate definers, and voilá gender is transcended.

That “masculine feel to Christianity” idea that’s been batted around lately? It’s blind to authentic and seismic shifts in how we relate to each other. Thankfully, pastors don’t have to think of themselves as jock straps of Christendom, which is nice. Beliefs and values are stronger bonds for determining relationships anyway. They always have been because they are the glue that keep communities cohesive and thriving.

Ten years ago I couldn’t get an audience with men, except maybe through countless hours of prior hard work to earn some kind of seal of male approval. Now I write, I teach, I interview, I create videos, and I interact with, encourage, and influence others across genders through the powers characteristic of a digital age.

More than ever, I realize that this is God’s plan for my ministry. We can only imagine how dynamic and transformative this new digital era will be. I’m confident that it’s a Golden Age for women in ministry.

For any woman reading this article, or any man who would like to encourage a woman in the work of the Lord, I encourage you to read, mediate, and pray with these two of my favorite passages on this topic, and be sensitive to the role God would have you play in this new Golden Era:

Luke 4:18-19 (The beginning of Jesus’ ministry; he quotes from Isaiah.)

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 1:46-53 (from Mary’s song, and the beginning of her ministry)

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him.”
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.”

Do I need a church office and cluster of parishioners to have a ministry? Nope. And neither do you. Welcome to the Golden Age.

About Today’s Blogger

Lisa Colón DeLay is a long-time blogger with a visual arts and design background and a Master of Arts in Religion, with a spiritual formation concentration. Currently, she is focusing on spiritual guidance for writers (especially bloggers) with a two month series and a burgeoning community on Facebook committed to virtue in blogging.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Contributions Welcome: Contact Ed to pitch your post idea in 2-4 sentences.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book!)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed.Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy or submitting your own story, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Joy Bennett of Joy in This Journey

I’ve seen birds eating berries on a bush. I’d seen seeds inside of apples that hold the promise of future orchards. However, I’ve never seen an apple tree eating an apple.

While fruit certainly ensures the long term survival of a tree, bush, or plant, many of a fruit’s benefits go to parties other than the plant or tree bearing it.

When I think about God producing fruit in me, I often expect to see these benefits and to enjoy them for myself. To a certain degree, I do. And yet, there is a lot more going on than what I gain:

· When I am patient with others, they are the ones who truly benefit.

· When I am generous with others, they are the ones whose needs are met.

· When I am merciful to others, they experience God’s grace.

· When I love others, they feel God’s defining quality for themselves.

Keep in mind, a fruitful plant is a healthy plant. Therefore, when I am fruitful, I will be at peace and even joyful about the presence of God in my life. However, the benefits of going deeper with God extend beyond ourselves to the people around us. They can also enjoy the fruit of God’s power when it’s manifested in our lives.

One of the dangers of a prosperity Gospel mindset that focuses on God’s provisions for myself, is that I fail to see God’s bigger vision. God wants to bless other people through me and through you. He wants to change me: not just to make me a better person, not just to fulfill my destiny, and not just to make me happy.

God wants to change you and me into fruit bearing plants so that we can bless everyone around us.

The same principle holds whether you speak of Christians as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, or a flowing stream. Christians provide life and blessings to those around them.

As we take time to meditate on the ways that God can change us during Lent, perhaps it will help us to realize that the quality of our relationships with our friends and family will be touched most profoundly in the process. We certainly will feel better if we go deeper with God, but the benefits hardly stop with ourselves.

Producing fruit is a long, difficult process at the end of a tumultuous growing season. Plants have to dig down into soil, survive drenching rains, and then fight for life as they grow from spouts into sturdy plants. Fruitfulness is never easy.

However, the benefits of God in our lives—the fruit—can bring peace and joy to others in more ways than we can imagine.

Besides, if we simply indulged on our own fruit all of the time, we’d only get sick.

The Greenhouse

Ask God if there is one person in particular who you are being called to bless during Lent this year.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

One year I decided that we needed four times the amount of lettuce that we had been growing. I eat a salad every day, and our house rabbits can’t get enough lettuce treats. Why not go for it?

I planted two long rows of lettuce. Some were spaced out perfectly, yielding huge heads of lettuce that kept me and the rabbits busy. However, I also planted some mescaline greens in rows that were really packed together. I couldn’t choose which ones to uproot and which to leave—I wanted all of them!

So I left the mescaline greens tightly packed in their rows. They stayed small and insubstantial. My salads were awash in floppy green lettuce leaves, lacking the pizzazz of mescaline because I didn’t give them enough space to grow.

Some days I feel like that mescaline, cramming too many things into my life and unable to do any of them all that well. In order to properly take root, plants need some space. A cluttered plant is a dead plant.

Jesus spoke of the Gospel taking root in otherwise good soil, but the worries and cares of this world choked out the Gospel before it could establish itself. Whether we are trying to do a lot of good things or we’re swarmed by competing priorities and desires, God needs space in our lives in order to help us grow and bear fruit.

I can feel this need for space in very literal ways in my daily life. When my desk or dining room table becomes overrun with piles of paper and sticky notes, I start to worry about what I’m forgetting. When I sit down to work, I start to flip through papers, wondering what I should do next.

How can I sit and pray if my desk and computer are littered with reminders of what I need to do each day?

I read an article once about taking the last 15 minutes of every work day to clear off your desk and to create your schedule for the next day. This provides a nice resolution to the day, a clean slate for the next morning, and a greater sense of calm about my priorities. Simply taking time to gather my bearings and to clear up my desk a little, left me far more relaxed at the end of the day.

Even five minutes of organizing and planning can make a huge difference in my day.

There was nothing bad about the piles of paper and notes on my desk, but too much of a good thing can make it hard for life to happen. When I clean up my life a little and figure out where work, family, rest, and prayer fit in, I’m able to let each part of my life grow simultaneously without letting one steal from the other.

This means that sometimes I have to remove activities that I would otherwise enjoy. However, if I want each area of my life to grow to complete health, I sometimes need to pull out a few things because we sometimes can’t fit everything into our lives.

The Greenhouse

Can you take five minutes to clear off one meaningful space in your home? A kitchen table or a desk? Does seeing it cleaned off change how you imagine using it?

Are you overwhelmed with too many good plants in your life? Are you fighting off too many weeds? Ask God to show you a healthy balance today so that he has enough space to go deeper into your life.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download the podcast version of each post by subscribing to my church’s podcast for each day of the series.

Taking Root is a series of meditations I’m writing and editing for Central Vineyard Church during the season of Lent. You can download a podcast for each day of Lent by subscribing to my church’s podcast or visiting the podcast blog for each day of the series.

We have some pretty crazy ways of talking about time. It’s like we’re in this abusive, exploitative relationship with time that passes through dramatic ups and downs.

• We keep time.
• We lose time.
• We save time.
• We kill time.
• We make time.
• We spend time.
• We waste time.
• We guard time.
• We fight time.

We always wish for more time.

On one hand, time is one of the most precious gifts we can give to someone else. On the other hand, it can be a slave master that rules us—prodding us to move faster, to do more, and to feel guilty. The guilt of how we spend our time can be crushing.

Time isn’t the problem.

Our problems come from our adversarial, sometimes overly sentimental relationships with time.

Time is a Gift from God

God is present in our days, using us for his purposes. He gives us these limited amounts of time on earth so that we can accomplish his Kingdom work. This is an essential starting point.

If time is my own, then I will guard it from others and fight to use it as I desire. If time comes from God, then I don’t need to fight, struggle, or save. God does the saving, and I do the following.

God Wants to Use Time

Each day doesn’t have to begin like a race we are losing. We can begin by seeking God’s desire for us and for our days. I often find that an attitude of submission and seeking that is directed toward God’s desire for my day can make the difference.

I begin to fight against time when I’ve elevated my own desires to a place where I can’t find God or his desires.

We don’t need to struggle with time. In reality, any struggle against time is a struggle against ourselves and neglects God’s presence in our lives. God wants to heal our relationship with time, leading us to a place where we can find his peace and rest each day as we line ourselves up with his desires and direction.

We’ll have enough time if we have enough of God.

The Greenhouse

Take a minute to thank God for today and to offer your time to him.

There’s a Celtic saying that goes like this, “When God made time, he made enough of it.” Take a few minutes to reflect on this. Is there one thing on your schedule where that feels untrue? What is God saying to you about that today?

When I converted from Catholicism to the Evangelical/Baptist camp at the age of 15, I thought of myself in terms of Martin Luther. I knew what the Bible says. I believed it. Little did I know I’d just set the stage for my own theological destruction.

Luther’s phrase, “Here I stand, I can do nothing else” comes to mind.

That rule became a ticking time bomb.

When your belief system requires obedience to the Bible above everything else, you’ve essentially created a standard that is above your belief system. Where the Bible leads, you must follow, even if that dismantles your other beliefs.

For as much as I love the Bible and look to it as a key source of direction in my faith, I can also see how reliance on the Bible alone creates churches full of mini-Luthers who are all taking stands all over the place. This simple observation is almost enough to explain the tumultuous history of Protestantism that continues today in online spats and denominational divides.

Everyone is quite concerned about figuring out where to stand. If Luther took a stand once, shouldn’t I do the same?

After obsessing for years over where I stand, I’ve been wondering if a more helpful matter is figuring out how we got where we are—the walking of yesterday rather than the standing of today. Here are three things I’ve learned by looking at where I’ve come from rather than where I stand:

How Awesome Am I?

Focusing on where I stand gives myself too much credit. Did I really figure all of this out? Nope. I have benefited from those who came before me.

Am I awesome? Not very. Even Luther would probably call me a swine or a fart bag—he was a pretty crass fellow.

I owe just about everything to those who came before me.

How Objective Am I?

When I step back to look at the circumstances that helped give birth to what I believe and do as a follower of Jesus, I gain a really helpful perspective. Not only have  I not made up everything I believe, but I’m taking on a set of beliefs from one time and place and applying them to my own.

I may discover that the beliefs I’ve adopted have some major short-comings if I know a little about their history. Otherwise, I’m not objective enough to figure things out on my own.

The Bible Doesn’t Work in a Vacuum

You can’t distill the Bible into a test tube where you figure out precisely how to live. To use another metaphor, it makes for a poor set of blueprints.

I have often found it far more helpful to think of the Bible as a portrait painting. You can go to a gallery and appreciate how an artist interacted with his subjects at a particular time and place and offered his own representation of it. The nature of the paint or the ability of artists to capture light determined what the paintings look like in each period.

The Bible will not be tamed. It will disturb, disrupt, and shock us. My beliefs have changed so much over the years, and I honestly don’t know what I believe about certain things any more because I always find out something different about God each time I read the Bible.

In reality, I do very little standing when it comes to the Bible. I see myself running, just trying to catch up to the interpreters who came before me and with the various stories that sometimes create portraits of God and his followers that are hard to reconcile with one another.

When you sign on to make the Bible your sole authority, you’re signing up for a wild, disruptive ride where anything contrary to the scriptures needs to go. If you know where your beliefs came from in the first place, you’ll at least be ready for this and have a better idea of where the most dramatic bumps and turns will come.

If you don’t know where your beliefs come from, you’re at the mercy of a Bible that will push, pull, and punch. The Bible will give us plenty of comfort, but with its words of encouragement comes a disruptive message that can topple over every belief system—even the belief system that claims to revere the Bible more than any other.

We are lucky to have the multi-talented Alise Wright as our guest blogger for today’s post:

I don’t know if music can technically be a part of your DNA from a scientific standpoint, but I’m pretty certain that music was etched into my soul from the start. From my earliest days, music has played an integral role in bringing me joy.

Likewise, the church has always been a part of my life. Some of my first memories are in the church. I can’t think of a season when the church hasn’t been a key character in my existence.

It makes sense that the two would find their way together.

It started from an early age, singing and playing the piano with my family music group. We were like the von Trapp family singers, only with cassette tapes of Amy Grant and Sandi Patti. And there were only five of us. And none of us were running away from Nazis. But otherwise, just the same.

Later music and faith came together in our church’s choir. Then again in college at the Newman Center. I’ve played the organ for a small mainline church and a keyboard stack in a large mega church.

Music and faith are inextricably linked for me.

But music as a ministry? That idea was a bit more elusive.

The overwhelming majority of my church experience has taken place in congregations where women were not permitted to be leaders.

No one ever said that women couldn’t serve, they just couldn’t lead. Women could teach Sunday School or work in the nursery or beautify the church building or be a part of music. However, the distinction between serving and leading always seemed to make these things the lesser ministries, and because I’ve never been one who liked to be pushed to the sidelines, I simply didn’t think about playing music as a ministry. It was just something that I did as an act of worship.

Then music was taken away from me for a season. I was told that I could attend church, but not have anything to do with music.

I thought that I could put it away. I could still worship from my seat on Sunday morning. I could still sing along to my MP3 player. I could still play the piano in my home.

But though this was all true, there was something missing.

The ministry aspect of music.

No matter how much I wanted a more prestigious seeming ministry, music was the ministry to which God called me. Playing was a way for me to enter into worship, but it was also a way for me to help others do the same. By doing this, I was participating in ministry.

And when I was ministering to others, God ministered to me.

If the creator of the universe can minister to me without a fancy title, I don’t need a title to minister either.

About Today’s Blogger

Alise Wright is married to her best friend and is mom to four incredible kids. She loves knitting, writing, playing keyboards in her cover band, and eating soup. She also loves making new friends and you can connect with her at her blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

You can stay updated on the latest post each week by signing up for the weekly e-mail list. (You also get a free E-book if you sign up in January)

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed. Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Tamara Lunardo (of Tamara Out Loud)

When I began giving my latest E-book away, I had to ask an important question: Why am I writing this book?

Giving up on any hope of making a profit had a way of sharpening my focus, training my heart to think beyond bank accounts, page views, and marketing platforms (though I will see a few benefits along these lines in the long run). Giving a book away is all about a passion for an idea, believing in my message to the point that I’m willing to share it as widely as possible at any cost.

I didn’t hold back with my latest E-book project. I created something that has value. Even a free book shouldn’t be a waste of someone’s time. I offered readers a chance to buy it for $.99 because I wanted to both provide a simple download option and a chance for them to support my work. However, the free download links on my site provided the same ideas and the same format.

Part of my motivation for this latest adventure in publishing had to do with helping to clean up a really big mess—a mess that I’ve contributed to over the years—divisions among Christians.

As I’ve shared my thoughts on unity and processed how we can make things better on this blog, a central idea emerged. It was not only worthy of an E-book, it was important enough to give it away.

I don’t plan on giving all of my books away this widely, but I know that I’ll do it again. It has been a refreshing reminder that storing up treasure in heaven and blessing others can sometimes fall aside, neglected while I try to build up financial security. Sometimes we have callings to fulfill and wrongs to set right.

Sometimes I need to try something new—something that doesn’t quite make sense but feels just so right that I can’t resist the call of adventure.

This post is part of Bonnie Gray’s Thursday Faith Jam. Visit Faith Barista today to read more stories about adventure.

When I put together my first draft of Coffeehouse Theology, I sent it to tons of friends to get their opinions. Tons. I’ll be owing my friends favors in return for the next two generations.

One of my friends said something like this, “You seem to like all of this emerging church stuff, but you don’t point out what’s wrong with it.”

Insert: double-take, wounded look, and passionate reply, “Something wrong with the emerging church??? What do you mean?”

I’ll just stick a footnote here in the middle of this post since no one reads footnotes and note without any foot that this was in 2006 before it became fashionable to stop emerging… or whatever.

Still, my highly intelligent friend shocked me. How could he doubt the goodness of this new movement trying to recover practices from ancient Christianity and critiquing the ways Christianity had been infected by Enlightenment Rationalism? I mean really, is that not awesome sauce—that is, before Parks and Recreation taught us to use the phrase “awesome sauce?”

While my time with the emerging church stuff taught me to be jaded and suspicious about the Enlightenment’s effect on Christianity, I hadn’t yet thought that this emerging stuff needed to a taste of its own medicine. Could I find the downside?

As to the details of that, I’ll leave that to the experts. All I know is that I used to think I was on team awesome. I could see the flaws in fundamentalism, mainstream conservative evangelicalism, Catholicism, and mainline liberalism, but I could not see any flaws on team awesome.

How could I see flaws on team awesome? Would I not join team awesome unless it had all of the correct answers?

Clearly the people with the flaws were those not on team awesome… All that to say, it took me a little bit of time before I could see my friend’s point.

And here’s the thing: We have lots of team awesomes. I just read about a NEW team awesome on a popular Christian blog. Only this time the blogger mentioned the conservative flawed team, the liberal flawed team, the emerging/missional flawed team, and the NEW team awesome that doesn’t have any flaws.

The new, cutting edge, revolutionary, game-changing stuff never has any flaws because its part of team awesome. That is, until it’s not.

Reading that post brought me back to that conversation with my friend and the first time that I realized I was a member of a made up team awesome. After looking over the emerging/postmodern context stuff, it didn’t take long to find some flaws that tarnished my image of team awesome.

We were now team pretty good.

In all of this, a lesson from writing a Bible commentary may help. I know, I know, you probably think I’m losing it after reading that last sentence. Just bear with me for a moment…

When writing a commentary about a tricky passage, Bible scholars start with the least likely meaning of a passage and then work toward the most likely meaning. In other words, they rarely say something is “unbiblical” or “wrong” and they rarely say that one perspective is the “certain” or “biblical” meaning.

I always liked this approach to Bible study because it keeps us in our place, seeing things in a mirror dimly, realizing that God’s thoughts are not our own. We all have our most likely take on a Bible passage, but we don’t need to create unrealistic team awesomes that are 100% correct and don’t have any flaws.

At our very best, we’d all be kicked off team awesome if it did exist.

We’re stuck with team pretty good, providing the most likely answers to life. What may surprise us is that a “pretty good, most likely answer” is really all we ever needed.